Category Archives: Commute Count

There hasn’t been much new happening on the ol’ drive into work,
but I saw something cool today. Near the Sedgwick interchange,
there was a hawk flying with a snake dangling from its talons and
another hawk trying to take it away from him in mid-air.

Then, after I got through Gorst, two herons flew right over the
top of me, like they were in formation. Those are some pretty neat
birds. They remind me of dinosaurs for some reason.

One annoying thing about the commute is my radio statics out
through Gorst and again on Warren Avenue. Can’t understand a word
they’re saying. I think it’s all the wires in those areas. I have
the same problem when I cover something at Bangor, where there are
no wires. I always imagine that they’re jamming my signals.

Took a roundabout way of getting here today so I could check out
a few things. I see they did some paving at the Harper
park-and-ride lot and painted the bus stop, but it’s not open yet.
They’re getting ready to start widening Southworth Drive next week.
There are stakes out in the bay on one side and up in people’s
yards on the other.

Figured what the heck, I’m already late anyway, and took the
scenic route along the water. Been a while since I was in the old
stomping ground. Old Stomping Ground. Where did that term come
from? It has something to do with frisky prairie chickens stomping
the ground bare in their mating routines. I read it on the
Internet.

So I wound up in Annapolis and accidentally found out Beach
Drive was closed there, for seawall work. I’m working on stories
about all three projects and hope to have them to you soon.

Am I the only one who didn’t know about the camels out by
Manchester State Park. I was all pumped to tell the folks at work
about them, but most everyone had already knew. There’s a
one-humper and a two-humper. They’re huge and hairy. A nice lady
came out in her John Deere rig to bring them some hay and hollered
“Good morning” to me. I took a few pics with my cell phone, but
they showed up as specs.

Was heading home early the other day. Head was aching so bad I
felt like I was going to puke. So guess what happens. I stop dead
in my tracks on the Mullenix overpass. Come to find out about 15
minutes later there’s a car fire closing the right lane. It was out
by the time I got there. First off, how does a car catch on fire?
And when it does, why doesn’t the gas explode and blow it to
smithereens?

Kid left the windows down overnight. Can hardly blame him. I
sure didn’t expect it to rain. So my butt is went from the drive
in. It must’ve rained a lot. The door handles were full of water.
Still are, for that matter.

A silver, unmarked cop car pulled alongside of me, waking me out
of a daydream. I kept an eye on him for a few blocks, then spaced
out again and started to leave him in the dust. Oops. Back down to
25 mph on Burwell. Do you know how hard it is to do 25 mph on
Burwell? OK, maybe 30 mph.

No incidents. I’m sure they have better things to do than pull
me over for going 35 in a 25. I hope.

Saw a big hawk preening on a light pole, the Canadian goose
family waiting for the tide to come in so it could go for a swim at
the Gorst log pond, and two stark white seagulls sharing the top of
a piling. It looked like they were on a date.

Right off the bat, some jerk in a souped-up Civic with a big
spoiler passes the guy in front of me on my little country road.
Just so he could hit the skids behind a line of cars and then stop
at a red light. Might be the first time I’ve seen somebody pass
there in 25 years.

Speaking of souped-up Hondas, aren’t they the last cars you
would’ve thought kids would be attracted to? It makes some sense, I
guess. They’re reliable and good on gas. But when did high school
kids ever make sense? Not when I was there.

So now we have all these kids buzzing around in lowered Civics,
Preludes and even Accords with goofy-sounding mufflers. That’s
exactly why my kid doesn’t want a Honda, because everybody else has
one, plus our family has owned nothing but Hondas his whole life.
Still, he loves driving my Accord. It’s a 5-speed he can treat like
a racecar.

So he got his license last week and has been on Craigslist for
months scoping out his first car. I don’t know why he needs one.
We’ve got this wonderful 1988 Ford pickup sitting in the driveway.
Went out and cleaned off the green layer that had grown during the
winter. Now it’s a nice, shiny black, except where there paint is
worn off. There are still some little seedlings growing in the
cracks, but they’ll die when the weather heats up. One of the
speakers and one of the windows even work.

The first car I bought was a 1966 GTO in 1972. My folks
co-signed for the $1,400 loan. Don’t tell him that. It was the
greatest car ever. Had a 389 in it. Could hit 100 down Berry Lake
Road. Don’t tell him that, either. Got rid of it because of the
1973 oil crisis. Gas prices rocketed from 39 cents a gallon to 55
cents, and we had to wait in long lines to get it. One of the
dumbest things I ever did was get rid of that car. Could get
another one now if I had $40,000 or so.

My kid hopes to save up about $3,000 by the end of summer. He
was really depressed this morning, though, because he turned in a
bunch of applications two weeks ago and still doesn’t have a job.
Teenagers live in their own little worlds. Well, if he does get a
job and save $3,000, I’d be pretty proud of him, and he should
probably be able to find a halfway decent car. My GTO, by the way,
if adjusted for inflation, would cost $7,000 today instead of
$1,400.

He’s actually been semi-reasonable in his wants, like a Mazda3
or Nissan Altima. Then there are ones I’m less excited about, like
Mitsubishi Eclipse and former police Crown Victoria Interceptors.
He actually said he’d give me a thousand bucks for my old Accord.
That might be the best way to go, though I’m sure he’ll have second
thoughts. Then I’ll have to go out and find a midlife crisis
car.

Sightings are getting scarcer and scarcer. Did see a cute
squirrel, belly up in the middle of the road, pretty orange belly
and legs sticking straight up. Another one that zigged when he
should’ve zagged. I know from our squirrel reporting a couple years
ago that a lot of you think they’re just cute rats, but at least
they haven’t gotten into everything at my place like the racoons. I
used to think raccoons were cute, too.

When I was a kid we lived in the middle of some woods and would
climb trees chasing squirrels. You had to get them in an isolated
tree because they could jump from one to another. We’d chase then
out to the end of a branch and then shake it until they fell.
Somebody would be on the ground waiting to catch them in a
gunnysack. We’d put them in a hamster cage and keep them for pets.
But the next morning they’d always be gone. Mom!!! She never said
anything, but I don’t think she liked wild animals as pets. The fun
was more in the chase anyway.

Did see the Goose family again, swimming in the Gorst log pond.
Mom, Dad and three or four little ones. The kids are growing up
fast.

I’ve never eaten goose, but know some people do, like on
holidays. Do they eat Canada geese? Can you hunt them? It wouldn’t
be much sport. You could go down to the railroad tracks and plunk a
bunch of them in no time. Somebody told me they taste like mud.

Speaking of tasting like mud, my grandma and grandpa had a place
in Purdy on the creek. He was a a mad scientist kind of guy. Built
a 10-foot wooden waterwheel for electricity along the creek. I
don’t know if it ever worked, but it was pretty cool. He also dug a
big pond and put a post in the middle of it. From the post ran a
cable or rope to a row boat. Somehow it was powered, maybe from the
waterwheel, and you could get in the boat and go around in
circles.

He’d haul salmon out of the creek and put them in the pond.
They’d get huge. We’d throw our leftover pancakes to them and it’d
be like sharks on blood, thrashing about. But they were gross to
eat. Tasted like mud.

Got kind of busy all of a sudden. The last time I was here it
was still April.

Haven’t missed anything spectacular, though. The last two
mornings I’ve followed tractor-trailer rigs that can’t stay off the
rumble strips. I don’t know what their deal was. Maybe they were
asleep. That’ll wake you up in a hurry, but they kept drifting back
to them.

Notice how the mornings have been so nice and then the weather
just breaks down in the afternoon. A guy on the radio described it
as “unstable,” which is perfect. Speaking of unstable weather,
how’d you like that little windstorm we had the other day. Didn’t
end up being that bad, but the roads were pretty green with fir
branches.

Reminds me of the big storm we had a few years back. I was on my
way home from work when the worst of it hit. Got almost to Sedgwick
Road when I came to a big tree down across the Tacoma-bound lanes.
Never seen that before. Somebody cleared it pretty fast, though.
Couldn’t even see who. Called the wife and kid while I was waiting.
They were at home, fine, with power.

So it’s pretty dark when I get going again. Follow incredible
lightning flashing every few seconds, all the way to Gig Harbor.
Turned on to my little country road and it was carnage. Pitch black
except for the lightning. Wove around fallen trees for about a
mile, under an angled one and the power line it knocked most of the
way down. Got within a few feet of my driveway and there’s a tree
all the way across the road. Have to turn around, go back under the
power line and tree.

Family hasn’t answered the phone for awhile. I’m thinking they
must be crushed by a tree. The longer it takes me to get to them,
the more worried I get. Have to go around the back way to try to
get home. It’s four times as far, and through a gorgeous
trust-land forest that tunnels over the road, so I figure it’s only
going to be worse than the other way.

Remarkably, I make it, 4-wheeling my Accord over branches and
around trees. Get to my house. It’s black. Not a peep. Struggle in
the blackness to unlock the door. Feel my way to the hall bathroom
where the flashlights are. Somehow get turned around and don’t know
where I am. I’ve lived here 20 years. Hollering at my wife and kid
the whole while. Get my bearings back and find the bedroom door. I
think I hear something. Snoring. Point the flashlight at them,
totally oblivious there’s a storm and the power’s out.

Had to take the kid to the orthodontist so came in late this
morning. Was a totally uneventful drive until I hit the Sedgwick
Road interchange, where traffic was stopped. DOT is replacing
smashed guardrails on the top of the hill going down into Gorst.
With good reason. Those things have taken a beating. So have those
green slats on top of the jersey barriers that screen your vision.
I heard it was that nut who crashed his nitro-powered Mustang in a
high-speed chase, but he couldn’t have done all this damage by
himself, on both sides of the highway.

The traffic jam looked worse than it was. Once the cars merged
in from Sedgwick, DOT narrowed the highway down to one lane and
then you had to deal with the Tremont folks. At that point, even
though it was still a long ways from the work, it was smooth
sailing.

I wonder if you’d have to change those guardrails so often if
you made them out of rubber. You hit them and they spring back into
place. And the car bounces back into the road. That might not be a
good thing.

In these merging situations, do you think you should move over
as soon as the signs say a lane is closed ahead, or go as far as
you can before merging in. I get over right away and stew because
everybody’s going past me. One cool thing today, though. I let a
guy merge in front of me and he flashed me a peace sign. Hadn’t
seen one of those for awhile.

By the way. The eagles are back. There were a bunch of them
hanging out in the mudflats today.

Motorcycle-cop speed trap on 16 between Burley-Olalla and
Mullenix. Looked liked they had plenty of business. Another trooper
in the median at Gorst. Two ambulances with emergency lights, one
going each direction. No wrecks. No baristas.

Wildlife has been pretty scarce. One Canada goose. One hawk
soaring, not sitting on a light pole. I like to brag about seeing a
bald eagle every day on my way to work. Hasn’t been one in a week.
Where’d they go? This paucity of animals has forced me
to notice plants. Like why do Himalayan blackberries and
Scotch broom, which aren’t even supposed to be here, outgrow
everything else? We need to find some way to pit them against each
other in some sort of invading plant showdown. Who do you think
would win? I’d put my money on the blackberries. They can really
slice you up. Scotch broom can’t hurt you much if you don’t have
allergies. If the prisons wanted to go green, they could grow a
20-foot swatch of those blackberries around the joints. There’s no
way you can get through that stuff.

There was three times as much to see than a normal day. I got
all the way to work, opened the car door, grabbed for my laptop and
it wasn’t there. Just friggin’ great. So I go all the way back home
to find the garbage can knocked over and junk all over the place,
grab the computer and drive back to work. An hour and a half of
driving to kick off the week.

I had put my computer where I couldn’t miss it. It was leaning
half on the door and half on the door frame. I missed it. I’ve
forgotten it before but never gotten all the way into work.
Unfortunately, I can’t blame anybody but myself. Wait, maybe the
dog. As I went out the door she had to go outside, too. I bet she
blocked my view. And if she’s the one that got into the garbage,
she’s really going to get it. No sleeping on the bed for at least a
night.

With all the driving back and forth, didn’t see too much. There
was one cop who had somebody pulled over and his lights going. No
wrecks. One real jerk of a driver. I was going between 60 and 65
and these two vans go past me in the left lane. Not flying, but
maybe 70 or more. A blue-green van was about half a car length
behind a maroon van and wouldn’t get off his butt. Had to keep
stepping on his brakes so he didn’t hit him. I don’t know what his
problem was. Don’t know if the guy in the maroon car was staying in
front of him in spite, or just because he couldn’t get over. There
were lots of cars in the slow lane. What’s the point of that?

It love the rare occasion when I catch up with people like that
and the cops have them pulled over. I just honk and wave.

One dead squirrel. Shoulda zigged instead of zagged. Barry
Sanders had his problems with that too. He’d get nailed behind the
line three or four times in a row, then boom, he’d break one into
the open and make defenders look silly grabbing at air.

Also one dead possum. 1 cool kingfisher. Alive. 2 Canada geese.
One was in a depression, physically, and all you could see was this
long, windy black and white neck sticking up. It looked like a
snake. I hate snakes. Kinda feeling sorry for crows and seagulls. I
see them every day but they never get mentioned here.

No cops. No wrecks. One broken-down semi truck. 2 hubcaps.
Remembering this stuff seems to be helping my premature dementia.
Tons of truck tire rubber. I have a theory that when conditions are
just right, like the temperature, dewpoint, atmospheric pressure,
humidity and Neptune being in Capricorn, the glue just melts on
truck tire rubber and it falls all over the highway. It must be
really expensive to buy those huge tires, so I’m thinking truck
owners just get them recapped with fresh tread.

Was driving home after working sports years and years ago, about
1 or 2 in the morning. Pitch black. Had the highway to myself. Just
spacing along in the beater Toyota pickup, listing to Art Bell and,
BAM, slammed into a complete recap in the middle of the road. Woke
me up. A cargo truck was sitting on the shoulder, so I got the
company name and called them the next morning. They owned up to it
and paid for the parts to fix my smashed-up front end. Made me pay
for the labor, though.